


In Vino Veritas

by Kayasurin



Series: Turn a Little Faster [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alcohol, Continuation of movie, E. Aster Bunnymund Feels, Gen, Jack Feels, Minor Swearing, Other yeti, drunk cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 15:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6572188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayasurin/pseuds/Kayasurin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In wine, truth. Doesn't mean the person dropping the truth bombs is the one drinking, though...</p><p>Or, post Easter, Jack explains to the Guardians just why he's cranky with them, and Bunny in particular. If Bunny had laid off the wine, they probably wouldn't have ended up on the couch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Vino Veritas

**Author's Note:**

> Direct continuation from the movie, so anything that happened during the movie, happened here. Extrapolating for pre-movie events with a bit of my own headcanons, though.

Jack couldn't help but slump down in the chair offered him, never mind that it was practically in the middle of the room, back to the door. If he'd had the energy, he would've moved to the windowsill, regardless that the sills weren't comfortable no matter which side of the glass you were on. A day ago, he might even have told his new… what, co-workers? Fellow soldiers-at-arms? Well, whatever he'd end up calling them, he might have told them about the trials and tribulations of perching beside windows, but…

Yeah. No. Just… just no.

… Maybe Sandy.

He wasn't alone in slumping down on the available furniture. Tooth and Sandy cuddled together on a worn-out looking loveseat, the Sandman looking a bit more alert, but also more strained. Then again, he'd come… very close to death; Jack supposed strained was an appropriate reaction.

Bunny had also taken a chair, almost directly across from Jack, which might've caused problems, except his eyes were closed, head tilted back. North, the only one currently still on his feet, moved over to an elaborately carved wardrobe and - oh. It was a drinks cabinet.

Jack tilted his head and squinted a little, doing his best to bring the bottles into focus. There were a lot of them.

North brought several bottles back to their little cluster, and set them down on the low table between the furniture. Once the bottles were on the table, he went back for five glasses. Jack, watching, noticed the faint hesitation once North had four glasses and reached for a fifth.

"Have you much head for drinks?" North asked, handing out the glasses. Jack shifted to get a little more comfortable, crystal-cut glass frosting over in his hand.

"Pal," he replied, a fragment of a quote from… somewhere running through his mind. Anyone who called you 'buddy' wasn't your buddy, something like that. "We can have the drinking contest later. I'll kick your butt." Like, after he'd slept a couple days and tossed around a few blizzards, something. He was just so tired, but at the same time felt kind of jittery. The adrenaline had bottomed out somewhere over Hudson's Bay, so… maybe those believers he'd gotten.

North grinned, and began pouring something that smelt like fruit and alcohol. Jack was too tired - and, had to be said, too inexperienced with fruits - to recognize what had gone into the drinks. Jack swirled the liquid around in his glass, the fruity smell getting stronger with the motion.

North sat down on another loveseat, which looked barely big enough for him. Which was probably kinda mean to think - it wasn't like he made the loveseat look small or anything, it was just that North _sprawled_. Knees hooked over the one arm, back propped up against the other, basically just taking up the whole thing. He even had one arm draped over the back.

Tooth sipped at her drink. "Oh, this is good," she said, looking as if she was finally relaxed, not just exhausted. "1809?"

"Close," North said, looking like he'd gone a few rounds with a prize fighter and was only just starting to bruise. He had the beginnings of a black eye, so Jack felt the analogy was apt. "1801. Good year."

"For cherries and apples, anyways." Tooth snuggled down a little more on Sandy, who didn't seem bothered by the contact. Jack thought about touching - not just incidental contact, but a hand on the shoulder… or in his mouth - and had to hide his shiver. The part of him that wanted that physical contact was drowned out by the part pointing out that physical contact always ended up painful.

Sandy downed his drink in one go, and used a wisp of sand to put the glass back on the low table. He didn't refill it; instead, the wisp turned into an exclamation mark that waggled about, getting everyone's attention. Even Bunny twitched a whisker, though he didn't open his eyes.

"Yes, Sandy?" North tilted his glass in Sandy's direction.

Sandy made a few shapes, too fast for Jack to parse out the individual figures - one day he'd steal himself a pair of glasses the right prescription strength, see if he didn't - and finished with a giant question mark.

"Hm…" North finished off his glass and poured out some more liquor. Or whatever it was. Sherry? "Well, let me think… After you, erm, vanished. Well, first, Jack showed great power fighting Pitch. Hah! Set him back good!"

Jack smiled tightly at North's praise. Yup, that was him, used for his strength and then… Well, no need to dwell. He was too tired to get worked up over it, anyways. He sipped at his drink in lieu of responding, the liquid faintly cool and rather tart. Not bad. A little too sweet, but not bad.

Bunny snorted, and opened his eyes. "We decided to do Easter, like we'd done the teeth. Get in a nice big whack at fading belief, that sort of thing."

Sandy nodded, his eyebrows furrowed together. Jack didn't know why the Sandman looked… confused? Wary? Hard to tell what that set to his mouth meant, or the implications of how Sandy kept looking from face to face. If he was looking for something, he wouldn't see it in Jack's expression; he was careful to look exhausted, nothing more. White knuckles didn't show with his skin tone, so the way he clutched his glass wouldn't be obvious.

Bunny leveled a look at North that should have resulted in scorched hair. " _Someone_ ," he drawled, "let an ankle biter pick his pockets. That Jamie, you remember him, he woke up and saw us?" Sandy nodded. "Got himself a sister, about… three?"

"Just," Jack said, despite his resolve not to talk.

Bunny stared at him, and then nodded. "Right, well. She got hold of a snow globe, got into the Warren." He took a deep breath, and let it out in a big, heaving sigh. "Could've ruined everything."

Jack snorted. "You had fun," he said. "Admit it."

"Yeah, _painting_ the eggs." Bunny tossed the last of his drink back, and leaned forward to pour himself another. "Having Pitch wreck 'em wasn't as enjoyable."

Sandy waved his arms, several exclamation marks dancing around his head. Tooth winced, and glanced at Jack. Something tight and cold enough to burn wiggled around in his stomach. He sipped at his drink again.

"Well, someone had to return Sophie once she'd fallen asleep," she said. "I volunteered, but Jack knows the town better…"

"I should," he mumbled. He'd died on the lake, after all. No wonder he kept going back; he probably had a gravestone somewhere in the historically-preserved graveyard.

"And then he vanished. Didn't show up until it was too late." Bunny sneered at Jack, halfway through his second glass of whatever it was they were drinking. "Went and traded Baby Tooth for his teeth -"

Oh, that was _it_. Jack snarled, glass shattering in his hand and slushy drink falling to the floor. His wind whirled around him, an invisible force of destruction. The fire in the hearth went out, smothered. So did half the lamps, leaving the room shadowed and gloomy.

"Oh what do _you_ know?" he demanded. "You weren't there. I should've joined Pitch after you ran me off, at least he was _honest_."

Bunny's lip curled up away from his teeth, which would've been more intimidating if he wasn't a _rabbit_. "Join Pitch?" he started.

Jack grinned. It made Tooth wince, probably because he was grinding his teeth at the same time. "Yeah," he said. "Join Pitch. Since, y'know, he was right about you guys. I mean, the head games? Not fun. But at least he didn't _lie_. Taunt, mock, and play the false sympathy, sure, but he told me exactly what to expect… and you did exactly what he'd said you'd do when he shoved me back out of his domain."

North took a deep breath. "Jack?" he asked, strangely quiet. "What do you mean?"

Jack didn't look away from Bunny, whose anger seemed to be fading. _Good_. " _The Guardians will never accept you_ , Jack," he mocked, voice high and sing-song. " _You’re not one of them_ , and _I thought this might happen_. And gee, what do you know." He pointed at Tooth. " _Oh Jack, what have you done?_ " And at North. " _Jack, where were you?_ "

Finally, he pointed at Bunny. "And what'd you say? Oh. Yeah. _We should never have trusted you_ , right before almost _punching_ me. Yeah, way to prove yourselves… prove you're just as bad as Pitch is!"

His wind got stronger, tearing at the curtains and their clothes. Or feather and fur, in certain cases.

"Jack…" Tooth's voice was quiet. It shouldn't have been audible. He heard her anyways. "We didn't know."

"Like you gave me a _chance_?" he demanded, gesturing with his bloody hand. "You _assumed_. You never even considered I might've been in trouble, no - _Jack Frost_ was no longer _useful_ so you just _tossed me aside_."

It hurt. He'd… well, he knew better than to hope for things. He'd been proven not only how futile, but also how harmful that was. At least for him.

Sandy flicked him on the forehead, a tendril of dreamsand cutting through the badly-controlled fury like a knife through water. The fury was still there, but the shock had him clamping down on it so that it stopped spilling outside. The wind died down, though the air was still cold.

"What?" he snapped, barely able to keep his glare in the face of Sandy's disapproval.

Sandy flashed several shapes at him, wingdings and Egyptian hieroglyphs, maybe. Jack shook his head, frustrated by his lack of understanding.

"No idea, man," he said, absently icing over the cuts on his fingers. "Your jive makes no sense."

A quartet of confused expressions was… well, it was really funny. No one could blame him for laughing, right? It took a minute to get control over himself again. "Sorry," he said. "I don't understand the shapes. You're too far away." He paused, and added, "I might be nearsighted, I don't know."

Bunny tossed back his drink, and then just held the empty glass to his forehead. “You don’t know,” he repeated, and sighed. There was something old, and tired, and incredibly sad in his eyes when he opened them.

“Alright, Jack,” North said, sounding… defeated, maybe. Except he hadn’t sounded like this even when faced with belief gone and his health declining. “Alright. I think… I think there’s a lot about you we’ve missed. Maybe you should tell us what.”

Jack looked around at the four of them, and then nodded. “Fine. Because you’ve missed one heck of a lot. Anyone got a bandage?” He held up his bleeding hand, and smirked at three winces and one tired look.

First aid was sent for, and applied by a tiny - possibly a child - yeti, while four others set the room back to rights, sweeping ashes back into the fireplace and lighting the lamps. One yeti paused to peer at them, grunt, and then vanished out the door. By the time the child yeti was satisfied Jack’s hand wasn’t going to fall off, and the three adults were done cleaning, the vanished one had returned with a rolling tea tray in a style Jack hadn’t seen since Queen Victoria had taken the British crown.

The yeti had brought out a cheese and fruit plate.

Jack looked at the little crackers and the cubes of different cheeses and two kinds of grapes, and lost it. He collapsed back into the chair, fingers clutched tight around his staff, and howled with laughter.

He didn’t even know why he’d cracked up laughing in the first place, and couldn’t have explained it once he’d gotten himself under control. Jack ignored the confused, worried looks from long practice, and loaded up several crackers for himself. The cheese was soft, with just an edge of sour, while the crackers were crunchy and salty and had the perfect contrast. And the grapes were grapes, juicy and tart and cool after he’d touched them.

Jack finished his snack, and stretched out a little. The yeti were gone again, leaving him and the four Guardians alone. It looked like he was the only one who’d eaten, which was a shame. Good food.

“How long have you Guardians been Guardians?” he asked, gesturing vaguely with one hand. “I didn’t hear about you until the _late_ -late eighteen hundreds.”

“Roughly two centuries ago,” Tooth said, looking wary. “Not exactly, of course, but close enough to make a good, round number.”

“Huh.” Interesting. “I’m three centuries. Exactly. As of thirteen days ago.”

“March Twenty-Seven?” North asked, half a second before Sandy signed something. “Ah, Seventeen-Twelve. You were born then?”

Jack smiled at him, nice and polite and constrained. “No, North,” he said, with the sweetest tone he could manage. “I died then. Easter Sunday, Seventeen-Twelve,” he added, looking over at Bunny. “Drowned.”

Bunny looked like he was going to throw a fit. Or throw up. “Easter?” he rasped, because of course that was the important thing. He snatched a bottle off the table, and sucked down three gulps, and wheezed a bit after. “Drowned?”

At this rate Bunny was going to pass out from alcohol poisoning long before Jack got past the drowning thing. “Not that I remembered,” he replied, leveling a dark stare on Tooth. “Since I woke up - hauled out of the water by the Moon - with no memories. Not even of my own _name_. So the Moon gave me one - Jack Frost - and then fucked off.”

He had to stop, if only because there was a short list of intimidating people who would’ve washed his mouth out with soap for swearing like that. His mom was third. His dad was fourth. His grandma was first, ahead of Mother Nature.

Grandma had been awesome. He’d only just remembered her, and he still missed her.

Jack shook his head and refocused. “I found a village my first night awake and aware,” he said, and clenched a fist. Not, thankfully, the bandaged one, otherwise that child yeti was probably going to thump him. “First person I try talking to walked right through me.” He stared at Bunny, and showed his teeth. “You fell to pieces with just one. Try half a dozen.” Sure, not all at once, but in the first week? It’d probably been two dozen. “Imagine it.”

Bunny took a gulp of his drink in response. Jack huffed at the lack of reaction, and looked around again. “I spent fifty years before I could talk to anyone. _Fifty years_. And the first contact I do have is a fight with some… river horse… thing.” Which he still couldn’t make heads or tails of. It’d been a horse made out of seaweed and what smelt like rotting fish, but it’d talked like… well, like a modern-day British-type professor person. Tweed personified. It’d been weird.

“He - it? - tried to eat me after,” he added. Not that it’d been a challenge for him; fifty years had been enough time to get something of a handle on his frost powers. Just frost, then, though he’d been able to put enough oomph into it to make the river horse pause long enough. Flying was great. Especially when running from something land- or water-bound.

Jack sat back down, and grabbed a cracker. “Anyways,” he said, deliberately brushing off the emotions that’d been woken up. He didn’t _like_ getting angry, or brooding, or wanting to make everyone else hurt. It wasn’t… Jack muched the cracker slowly, and swallowed. He could hurt people, when he got angry. He had hurt people. And worse, he hadn’t really meant to. Anger meant a loss of control, and a loss of control meant people getting hurt when it wasn’t _necessary_.

As for the brooding… Now that he had his memories back, apparently it’d been a thing. Bright and smiling Jack would turn into a sullen beast stalking around the fields with the sheep, for an hour or a couple of days, until something knocked him back into good humour. It was almost fitting, now that he was Frost. It was kind of like winter weather in a nutshell.

“Somewhere around there, I came to the attention of Mother Nature. Scary lady. Got hauled up into her court by walking trees.” He allowed himself a few seconds to sulk. She’d done the smart thing and sent _evergreens_ after him. Sure, he could put them to sleep _now_ , but back then? He might’ve managed a cornfield or two, maybe some blackberry bushes.

“What did she want with you?” Tooth asked. “Oh, if she hurt you -”

“So _now_ you care?” Jack asked, and then waved it off. Tooth’s hurt expression was somehow less pleasing than Bunny’s… but then, Tooth and him didn’t have the history of viciousness he and Bunny had. “Did you know Mother Nature assigns the seasons? Like, head of spring, leader of summer, yadda yadda and blah blah blah?”

Bunny nodded, his movements just a little looser than before. “Yeah,” he said. “Took couple’a decades a’ earbashing ‘fore she tookit from me and gave it to… what’s his name? I’d’a just done a bodge of it.”

Jack stared at Bunny, and then turned to look at North and Sandy, eyebrows raised. Sandy squinted at Bunny, and then waggled his hand back and forth in a ‘so-so’ gesture. North just rolled his eyes and shook his head, looking exasperated.

“He will linger at tipsy for much longer than anyone else will stay conscious,” North whispered.

Yeah, okay. It was a bit weird watching Bunny look that… soft and calm, though.

“She made me the Voice of Winter,” he said, and smirked at the sudden influx of startled expressions. Bunny’s came a good second after everyone else. “Yup. I am the official leader of Winter. Which, not only am I older than this order -”

“We all are,” Tooth pointed out. “Even North. Though you might be older than him.”

Really? “Okay, well, I also outrank you. None of you are seasonal heads.”

Tooth nodded. “That’s true.”

Jack caught up a handful of grapes, and popped them one at a time into his mouth. “So, head of winter,” he said, between grapes. “Biiiiiig power boost. Weird… echoes of memories.” His new instincts had come with a plethora of six-second-movies, apparently. Usually violent ones. “At least it ensured I knew how to use my new powers. Mostly.”

He scowled at his staff. That frost-lightning had _not_ been on the list of known powers. Useful, and he’d been just as quick to figure out how to use it properly, but still a surprise. What else was a surprise? Was it just because it’d been a physical fight? If he fought people _more_ , was he going to find other abilities?

… Was an army of snowmen in his near future?

Right, right, focus. What was his plan again? Rub the Guardians’ noses in the fact that they’d been dicks, right… Making Bunny cry would probably be a bonus. In all fairness, Bunny had made _Jack_ cry so many times he’d happily lost count.

“Mostly?” North asked, apparently translating for Sandy if the stare meant anything.

Jack stared into the fire. “Nothing noteworthy.” Really. He’d only been stuck running around shirtless, and apparently if he didn’t have a shirt his shoulders frosted over, and it sparkled, and…

And he was pretty sure those Twilight vampires were at least partially his fault. Even if he’d been about a century and a half too early to inspire that woman.

North gave him a look like the old Russian didn’t believe him, but thankfully let it drop. The shirtless thing had been the _least_ embarrassing of the incidents, and Jack was going to keep them secret and take them to his grave.

Second grave.

Though, speaking of North… “Didn’t you ever wonder why a spirit was top of your naughty list, year after year?” he asked, apropos of nothing.

North frowned, and shook his head. “Naughty list gives a few details. Icing roads, freezing pipes, making people late for work -”

“Hey!” Jack scowled. “Wrong! Well, except for the late for work thing, that’s just people not giving themselves enough time with the snow.”

“Then what is it?” Tooth asked.

“Not preventing those things.” Jack shrugged at their expressions. “Look, the weather is a delicate balancing act - look at the way people are panicking over ‘global warming’. Maybe if they stopped pouring their poisons into the atmosphere it wouldn’t be so hard trying to keep things on an even keel…” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Sorry, rant for another day. Long story short, my job is the winter equivalent of running around _to_ the flashing buttons and figuring out if there’s an emergency or not. Done right, no one’s surprised by black ice or flash freezes. Done wrong…”

“Black ice and burst pipes,” North finished, looking thoughtful. Jack wondered if that should worry him. Probably not. Santa technically fell under winter anyways, he could just pull rank if he needed to.

“Or surprise storms,” he agreed, and eyed Bunny. “Like what happened in ‘68. If you’d _paid attention_ you’d have noticed I was trying to _stop_ the storm. But no, your precious eggs. And of course yelling solves everything, not like I needed all my concentration or anything.”

Bunny cringed, and clutched the mostly-empty bottle to his chest. “It weres slow - _snow_ ing an’ it was jus’ you,” he protested. “How’us I s’possed t’ know?”

“You could have talked, maybe? They’re called words, Cottontail, they’re even free.”

“Jack,” Tooth said, cringing a little. “Can we please focus? You’re the Voice of Winter, you… undo other winter spirits’ mischief?”

Jack huffed, and nodded. “Or humans, as best as I can, yeah.” He glared at Bunny. “Which isn’t made any easier by other people who should _know better_ , but yeah.”

Bunny somehow made his eyes double in size without, actually, doing anything, until he looked like those sad-eyed dogs animal shelters used to try and increase adoption numbers. The effect was spoiled when Bunny took a large swig of whatever he was drinking.

“Right,” Jack said. “I’m just going to skip to this Easter, because recounting how many times I tried to get into the Workshop for one reason or other, or just talk to someone who didn’t want to kill me, is kinda depressing.” Wow, group cringe. It was almost starting to make him feel bad, except, well…

They’d known about him. They’d _known_ , and apart from Bunny and every so often Sandy, five minutes here and there, done _nothing_. This wasn’t like his anger with Pitch, because that’d been impersonal. This, this _was_ personal, and he wished he’d been aware of it before he’d sat down because then he never would’ve continued this conversation in the first place.

He really needed to start picking up books on psychology, maybe even reading them. Might help avoid this situation in the future.

“So,” Jack said, almost growling. “Here’s what happened. We did the Easter Thing, and then I took Sophie back to Burgess.” He’d gotten to hold a kid, warm and alive, asleep and trusting, in his arms. It’d been at once way too long and also over far too fast. What was he supposed to do with all that physical contact, anyways? But at the same time…

“And then I heard someone calling my name.”

If Bunny kept drinking like that, he’d pass out and probably die of alcohol poisoning. Uncharitable, perhaps, but true.

“Turns out,” Jack said, turning to Tooth, “Pitch was using my tooth box against me. Memories of my sister calling my name, and hey. I am - I _was_ \- a good big brother. Of course I went.”

“Your tooth box?” Tooth shook her head. “He shouldn’t have been able to do that… Oh. He used your memories, you…” Her shoulders slumped. “I’m so sorry, Jack. I… I’m so sorry.”

Nice to hear, if a little late. Jack shrugged, and decided to try another glass of whatever the alcohol was. Maybe he’d get more than a couple sips, this time. “He played head games with me. Then dumped me out into one of the tunnels, told me it was all my fault, and let me wander off to get ambushed by the three of you.”

North winced. “In retrospect,” he said, “it seems rather obvious… That you had been waylaid, that is. I am uncertain exactly why we didn’t consider it…”

“Because you think of me as a troublemaker, unreliable, who ices roads and closes down cities for fun. Duh.” Well, he supposed he sort of did, but only enough to have the schools close down. Nice, fluffy snow that packed into snowballs and snowforts, and was great to go sledding on. None of that icky sleet or cold temperature warnings, no powerlines getting taken out…

Sandy waved his arms, and even if Jack couldn’t see the glowing symbols clearly, he was clearly demanding Jack continue talking. Fair enough. “We’re almost done,” he told everyone. “Basically, after you guys ran me off -” What was Bunny doing, playing a drinking game? He needed to stop taking a swig of fruity alcohol every time Jack opened his mouth. Also, how many bottles had the overgrown rabbit already had? Three? More? “I took off for Antarctica - and yes, I _can_ fly that fast.”

Just not easily. And he had a feeling going at that speed was more disruptive than any five winter spirits trying to deep freeze a continent or two. He’d be cleaning up after his mess for _years…_ Oh, he didn’t really want to think about what was probably going to happen in the coming decade, but he was the one who’d messed up weather patterns… North to south pole, which meant… Whee, polar vortexes, the only thing worse than snow falling black from smog.

Jack took a deep breath, and sipped at his bottle. “Pitch showed up, with Baby Tooth. He tried, uh, seducing me to the dark side.” He paused, and tilted his head to the side. “Not sure if he was trying to do a father-son thing, or maybe a lover thing, or some gross combination…”

Bunny choked on his drink, which was some kind of poetic justice, in Jack’s opinion. He wasn’t sure what it was justice for, exactly, but there was a nice, long list of things just from the past three days. He’d make a list and throw ice darts until he hit one, later.

“You are… not joking,” North mumbled. “Lovely.”

Sandy and Tooth had a quick conversation, consisting of blurry shapes and facial expressions, before Tooth sighed and looked over at Jack. “According to Sandy, Pitch had a wife once. She was… shorter, with very pale hair. Other than that, there’s no resemblance, but…”

Jack stared at her. “Okay. That’s. That’s worse, actually.”

“Sorry. I take it you didn’t agree?”

“Of course not! Besides the creepy factor? If I joined him everything was going to be… fear. I don’t want to be feared. Well,” he amended. “Mostly I don’t. The Ijiraq can go right on hiding in their caves, the jerks.”

Sandy flashed several large question marks in the air. “They kidnap kids,” Jack explained. “Well, they used to. Now they mostly run away from people and gibber a lot.”

He smiled innocently at three suspicious looks and one mournful one. Bunny had probably lost the thread of conversation at least one bottle ago, maybe two, considering how fast he was drinking. “What?”

Tooth and North shared a _Look_ , and then North and Sandy shared a _Look_ , at which North nodded and turned to Jack. “You refused Pitch’s offer. What then?”

“Traded my staff for Baby Tooth, so he wouldn’t hurt her. He broke my staff, dumped me in a ravine with Baby Tooth and my tooth box, and then did one of the stupider things he could’ve done. He dropped my staff in with me.”

It probably wouldn’t have slowed him down too much - it wouldn’t have been the first time Jack was separated from his staff, and last time there’d been… most of Europe between him and it. He’d still been able to summon it to him, thank you very much weird memory echos. At least it’d worked better for him than whichever short-lived predecessor had needed the ability. That said… It probably would’ve slowed him down _just enough_ to fail at restoring Jamie’s belief.

Jack shrugged, and took another sip from his bottle. “I looked through my memories, figured out my core - it’s fun, by the way - and fixed my staff, then took off as quickly as I could to Burgess. I didn’t know about any other kids, but I figured Sophie at least would still believe, and maybe a few of the older kids too. Saw Jamie talking to his stuffed rabbit, kinda like he was trying to talk to Bunny or something…” He waved one hand at the sloshed Easter Bunny, which was probably a mistake.

There was a grunt, a blur, and an impact that knocked his bottle from his hand and pinned him to the chair.

He couldn’t see. He couldn’t move. There was something big and warm and furry pinning him to the chair.

Wait a second.

Jack groaned, head dropping forward to press harder against a furry shoulder. North or Bunny, North or Bunny… well, he honestly hoped it was Bunny. The Easter Bunny was too drunk to be thinking straight, and if it was North, they were going to have _Words_.

The weight pinning him down shifted, and he was able to see over said furry shoulder to glare at the three stunned-looking Guardians. North was, thankfully, still in his chair, looking gobsmacked. Sandy looked like he didn’t know whether to start laughing or run for the hills, and Tooth looked like she wanted to smack a gob.

Bunny, two-hundred-pounds too big to curl up in Jack’s lap, sobbed mournfully in Jack’s ear.

Jack was pretty sure, if there was a soundtrack to his life, this would be the part where the music would be played on air horns. Just for the absurdity. Like that air horn meme, replacing regular instruments with the overly loud torture devices.

“What are you doing?” he asked, as calmly as he could.

“You saveded me,” Bunny sobbed, probably. He was slurring really badly, so it was hard to tell. “Believeded in me because you!”

Jack patted Bunny on the side, and turned his desperate expression on the others. “I have no idea what is going on here.”

For half a second, he really didn’t know why they looked so dismayed. Then he rolled his eyes. “No, I understand hugging and stuff, but _why_ is he _hugging_ me?”

Bunny shifted, digging one foot into Jack’s thigh, and nuzzled at Jack’s hair. He mumbled something, might’ve been ‘fluffy’ or maybe ‘ducky’. At least he’d stopped sobbing.

North looked thoughtful. It was clearly a lie. “I think perhaps emotion has gotten better of Bunny. And impulse to hug is understandable, we…” He faltered, and stopped smiling. “We clearly made very big mistake with you, Jack. Hugging might not fix problems, but makes everyone feel better. Usually,” he added, eyeing Bunny - who was sobbing again, Jack was not impressed - pointedly.

“Okay,” Jack said, raising his voice. “Bunny! I feel better! You can let go now!”

Bunny just tightened his grip and whined, a high, thin sound that clarified into a long, drawn out ‘no’. “Wanna, wanna snuggle,” Bunny said, petting Jack’s hair. Jack might’ve made a confused sound at that, because there were still two arms wrapped around his shoulders and waist - Bunny was huge and it wasn’t fair - but there was a hand in his hair. “Hug it out,” Bunny said, enunciating carefully. “Mamma says.”

Bunny had a mother. Jack supposed that made sense, but it still seemed like a weird mental image. “Okay. I have been hugged. You can let go of me now.”

Bunny pulled back, and stared at him with hazy eyes, ears flopping every which way. He looked… completely, totally sloshed… but also a little bit cute.

Tiny bit. He’d be more cute if Jack still had feeling in his legs.

“No,” Bunny decided. “Hugging. Good hugs. More hugs?”

Jack patted Bunny on the side, and eyed the others. “Y’know, I think Tooth could use -”

“Oh would you look at that, I have a date in Beijing with some lost teeth, I’d better get going. Let’s fly together, Sandy.”

“And I need to come up with plan,” North said, as he shoved up out of the chair. “Get teeth back from Pitch’s lair, before he gets strength.”

“I’ll help. I was there, I -” And he was being hugged again.

“Is ‘kay,” Bunny mumbled, pressing his face against Jack’s cheek. “Is ‘kay. Hugs to better.”

Jack glared, but everyone else was abandoning him to Bunny’s tender mercies. “Yeah, okay,” he said, and shoved at the Easter Bunny’s chest. “But if we’re gonna hug, it’s gonna be on the floor. You’re heavy.”

Bunny tilted his head to the side, ears flopping into his face. “Floor’s hard,” he said, after a moment’s intense thought. Another moment, and a wobbly look around the room - literally wobbly, Jack caught hold of Bunny’s fur and then wondered why, considering there was no way he could hold up the overgrown rabbit if he fell - Bunny pointed at the couch, now abandoned. “Soft!”

Jack sighed as he was hauled up in the air by - yup - three arms. “Sure,” he said, and went passively to his doom. “Soft. Sounds great.”

Soft was actually pretty nice, once he was arranged to Bunny’s satisfaction on the couch. The Easter Bunny was draped all over him, head pillowed on Jack’s chest, and he was like a warm, heavy blanket. That purred. Jack realized that at some point Bunny had grown yet another arm, so now there were four - one left and three right, two of which dangled down onto the floor - but it was really hard to care.

It was probably foolish to try to get sense out of a drunk, but he was going to try anyways, Jack decided. “Hey, Bunny?” He waited until he had the Easter Bunny’s blurry attention. “What’s with the hugging, anyways?”

They were nice hugs, or cuddles, he supposed. Didn’t make him want to crawl out of his skin to get away from the physical contact, the way he’d kind of felt when Jamie grabbed him about the waist. Not that Jamie’s hug had been bad, just… unexpected, and he’d kind of half-expected the kid to go through him anyways, so the contact had probably had some bad, ‘walked through’ associations with it.

Bunny, though… Yeah, the pins and needles in his legs and feet weren’t fun, but other than that, he was warm and comfortable and being purred at by a… cross between a spider and a rabbit, apparently, because now the rabbit had six arms.

Bunny blinked at him, the purr tapering away. Jack waited, hands buried in the thick, soft fur at the nape of the Easter Bunny’s neck. He could wait awhile; not only was he pinned down, but his fingers were warm for the first time in… Well. It felt like forever.

Since falling through the ice, definitely.

Bunny patted Jack on the face with one large, gentle hand. Jack caught it, and then grabbed a second hand, looking between the two. The first hand had seemed a bit too soft, but now that he was looking at it… it must’ve been one of the new ones. Where the pads hadn’t gotten calloused from running around, holding paint brushes, and who knew what else. Neat.

“I’m sad,” Bunny said, and rested his head on Jack’s chest again. “Sad, sad, sad. Mad. Glad. Um…”

“Why do you feel bad?” Jack asked, giving into temptation. He let go of Bunny’s hands, and ran his fingers down along the backs of those long ears. Bunny shuddered, and made a strange, hiccuping sound.

Bunny’s eyes were bigger than ever, green and watery. He patted Jack’s face again, and then sighed. He mumbled something that probably wasn’t even English, and then said, “I hurt you. Shouldn’t’ve. Bully.”

Well, he’d wanted to make Bunny cry. Why did getting what he wanted make him feel so horrible? “I don’t know about a bully,” he said, petting Bunny’s ears again. “Maybe a jerk, but I don’t know about bully. You just yelled. Lot’s of people have done worse - hey, what is it?” he asked, because Bunny had let out a keen and done his best to merge his face with Jack’s chest.

“No,” Bunny mumbled. “No worse. Worse is _bad_.” He looked up, the short fur around his eyes slicked down with moisture. “‘M _sorry_ , Jack. I…” Words apparently, weren’t enough, because he went back to pressing his face into Jack’s chest.

Jack sighed. Yeah, there was no way they were going to have any kind of conversation with Bunny drunk like this. “Hey,” he said, nudging Bunny’s knee with his toe. “Wanna know something?”

Bunny looked up, ears back and mouth set into a pout. “What?”

“The kids think you’re cute,” Jack crooned, and tapped Bunny on the nose. “Cutest little fluffy bunny in the world.”

Bunny wrinkled his nose. “‘M not _cute_ ,” he mumbled. “‘M a mas’er of marel… martal… punching stuff.”

“Adorable and fluffy and cute as a button,” Jack crooned, and laughed at Bunny’s expression of disgust. “But you are, you are, I bet you have tea parties with your eggs in little dresses and hats and -”

“No!” Bunny wailed, one of his soft-pads-hands pressed against Jack’s forehead. “Eggs can’t drink tea,” he added, because that was clearly the important thing here.

Jack laughed, and pulled Bunny’s hand down. “Hey, wanna know something else?”

“‘M not cute,” Bunny muttered, and nudged Jack’s chin with his nose. “What?”

“We’re going to talk in the morning. Well,” he amended, when Bunny started purring again. “Guess it depends on how bad the hangover is. I can wait.” But they would talk.

He’d make sure of it.

Maybe this next time, he wouldn’t want to make Bunny cry.


End file.
